The present invention relates to a floor or carpet sweeper. More particularly this invention relates to such a sweeper having a cylindrical brush rotatable about an axis transverse to the normal direction of travel of the sweeper over a surface being cleaned.
Such a floor-sweeper is already known and in widespread use and usually includes a housing in which there are mounted bearings for the shafts of driving wheels which rotate in engagement with the surface being cleaned and which drive the cylindrical brush into rotation about its axis. The housing usually includes a rigid circumferential frame, and the bearings for the shafts of the driving wheels are usually located in the lateral regions of the housing adjacent the lateral walls of the circumferential frame. The conventional housing further includes a cover which closes that side of the housing which faces away from the surface to be swept during the use of the cleaning device.
In this conventional floor-sweeper, the bearings are constituted as discrete elements which are separate from the housing and also separetely manufactured, such bearings having guiding and connecting portions. The frame of the housing of this conventional floor-sweeper then includes complementary guides in which the guiding portions of the bearing elements are received, the connecting portions of the bearings connecting them to the housing and preventing the bearings from moving relative to the housing once they have been assembled.
Experience with this type of floor-sweeper has shown that their manufacture is rather complex and consequently expensive for several reasons. First of all it is necessary in such a conventional floor-sweeper to separately produce the frame of the housing of the floor-sweeper device and the respective bearings, and then employ a separate assembling operation in which the bearings are introduced into the guiding portions of the frame of the housing, properly positioned in such guiding portions, and connected to the frame in such proper positions. On the other hand, the respective components which together form the housing, that is the frame and the bearing elements, must have sufficiently large wall thickness for the frame and the bearings to have the required rigidity, which is especially true when the various components are made of synthetic plastic material. The consumption of material is further increased by the need for providing the various guiding portions on the frame and on the bearing elements, which guiding portions then either cause or call for a further increase in the wall thickness of the various components. The increased material consumption not only increases the cost of manufacturing the device, but also make the floor-cleaning device rather bulky, heavy, and unwieldy.
In such a convention floor-sweeper the bottom of the housing is closed by means of a cover plate which is pivoted usually at the back of the housing about an axis parallel to the rotation axis of the cylindrical brush and perpendicular to the normal direction of travel of the sweeper. This cover plate can be pivoted away from the housing in order to expose the dust-receiving receptacles and allow the sweeper to be emptied out after a cleaning operation.
The disadvantage of this type of construction is that the dust in the receptacles often catches on the brush requiring vigorous shaking of the apparatus so that its cleaning-out is an onerous job.
Furthermore such arrangements normally do not allow for a simple adjustment of the relative heights of the brush and the wheels so that the device cannot be used on bare floors or high-pile carpets. In some of the arrangements which have a height adjustment for the brush the complicated mechanism required for such height adjustment increases the cost and complexity of the sweeper considerably.